


Love G & J

by rollercoastermoon



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Gen, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Prompt: Beaten, Whumptober 2019, in november because i'm slow, pacifists shouldn't write fight scenes, prompt: out numbered in a fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 20:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21380179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rollercoastermoon/pseuds/rollercoastermoon
Summary: He almost goes defensive, almost curls up and covers his head, hopes for the best. Almost.Then he reminds himself: They are not getting his watch.
Comments: 64
Kudos: 312





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first foray into Prodigal Son, and thankfully I had some good betas to help me out! Thank you so much to: LokiObsessionwithasideofStucky & Sop12345d. You both helped me so much by both reading for the errors you found, but also by alleviating my biggest fears about this fic. You're both awesome! <333
> 
> This one fills two prompts, because Whumptober whumped the heck out of me. Whumptober's prompt: beaten, and my Bad Things Bingo prompt: outnumbered in a fight.

Malcolm doesn’t even go looking for trouble. It’s just that he can’t sleep. He can’t sleep, and the walls of his apartment are closing in on him, too small, too small like a box. Like the back of a station wagon. He can see that knife, feel it in his hand. He can smell decaying leaves and hear them under his feet. Ainsley’s words about how broken he is, despite Mother’s reassurances that he’s not. Malcolm knows the truth, it keeps echoing inside his skull. And it’s keeping him from closing his eyes. So he gets dressed again, grabs his phone out of habit, and leaves his too small apartment behind.

In hindsight, he’ll tell Gil later that he really should have considered _ where _ he was walking. But he doesn’t. He just...walks. Sometimes, it’s like part of his brain shuts off, and his body takes over. He’s got enough awareness to avoid walking into traffic (even at night, this late, there is some traffic) or things. He even dodges a pothole in middle of a crosswalk at one point. But the rest of his head is a thousand miles away, thinking things that he’s not even aware he’s thinking. It used to scare him, coming back to himself to find he had lost an hour to pacing his dorm room floor (his family’s wealth and his myriad of mental health problems lead to him having a single dorm room, so thankfully there was no roommate to witness that). But now he knows he’s disassociating, and to be honest, it’s sometimes helpful. He knows enough not to tell his therapist that, because she’ll probably point out all the reasons that’s a Bad Way to look at things, but for now, it’s fine. 

All he knows is he was walking, and his brain went away a little, and then bam - there’s a hand being shoved into his chest, hard enough that he stumbles back, blinking into the present to find two men in front of him. Angry-looking men, he realizes a moment later. One of them has a knife, the other one a baseball bat. Malcolm finds his eyes focusing on the knife, absurdly glad it’s a kitchen knife and not a pocket knife. He’s not sure he could handle it if it looked like the one found in the station wagon. He doubts a flashback right now is a good idea. 

“Are you deaf, man? Give us your money.” The one holding the knife says, like Malcom kind of expected him to, cliches and all.

He barely stops himself from rolling his eyes at the sheer lack of originality of the man’s demand. He nods to show he heard, raising his left hand up in what he hopes is a ‘don’t get stabby’ kind of gesture, and reaches into his pocket, then remembers. “I don’t have my wallet with me,” he tells the men. 

The one holding the knife is rocking back and forth from foot to foot, eyes everywhere but on Malcolm, agitated and paranoid. Given the scabbed state of his face, the bug eyes, Malcolm figures he’s on something. The question becomes, what is he on? Meth is the obvious answer, given the scabs, but not everyone sticks to one drug. Malcolm’s eyes shift to the other man, who’s remained silent but is looking up and down the street like they’re in broad daylight and a person is going to come walking by and find them. Paranoid as well.

Not good. Paranoid people do dangerous things. 

“Bullshit,” Batty says, and lunges at Malcolm with the bat raised, but stops short, like he expects that little display would scare Malcolm into compliance. 

‘_ I have daydreams scarier than you _’ Malcolm thinks towards the other man. He thinks ‘daydreams’ because if he calls them what they really are - hallucinations - he’s admitting to himself that his mind is falling apart much more than he’d like to admit - even to himself. 

“I really don’t have any money,” Malcolm tells them, trying to sound genuinely sorry about this fact. He wants them to think he’s on their side. But he’s tired. He doesn’t want to be stabbed because he forgot his wallet at home. 

He wonders, if he turns and runs, will he be faster than the knife? Are they amped up enough to chase him, or are they more paranoid about attracting attention? He’s not sure, but he tries to edge a step back, see what they do. Both step forward. Not good. They’ll follow him, he thinks, if he turns and runs. All his muscles go tight, even the perpetual shaking of his hand stills. It always does, in moments like this. 

Then the choice to run or fight is taken from him with four words from the one holding the knife, “Give us the watch.”

Malcolm rocks his weight back onto his back leg. “That is not going to happen,” he tells them, calm but certain. As in, the-moon-is-not-going-to-turn-purple-and-fall-into-the-Hudson-tonight level of certainty. Underlying that certainty is a promise - they will not get his watch without a fight. He can’t give that up. He won’t. Not to two low life thugs who stick people up with knives and bats. He _ can’t _. 

“Fuck you, man,” the bat one says, and that’s it, apparently, some signal or declaration that there is no more time for talking, because they both attack at the same time.

The bat comes at his head at the same time the other one jabs forward with the knife. Malcolm twists away from the knife as he throws his left arm up to protect his skull because he’d rather not eat applesauce and drool in the corner for the rest of his miserable life, if the blow doesn’t outright kill him. _ What would brain damage on top of his Humpty-Dumpty psyche look like? _ part of him wonders, as the bat crashes against his upraised arm, and continues forward, cracking into his left eyebrow with a lot less force than it would have if his arm hadn’t been in the way, but the blow hurts, still sends him stumbling backwards. His arm goes numb in that concerning, this-is-going-to- _ seriously _-hurt-later kind of way. 

The one with the knife’s jabbing lunge has left his stoned ass off balance - he stumbles forward when he doesn’t actually plant the knife in Malcolm’s gut like he expected. The whole point of all the self defense drills and Judo classes he’s been through is this: it’s sheer automatic muscle memory for Malcolm to surge forward, grab the man’s knife hand by his wrist, wrap his other hand around the bastard’s upper arm just above his elbow, and push in two different directions until he feels the snap reverberate in his hands and the thug screams. Loud. The knife drops to the ground. Malcolm kicks it away. 

The baseball bat asshole takes another swing that Malcolm can’t block because his hands are busy, so he turns away and ducks his head. He catches the bat across the back of his shoulders, goes down still holding onto the other man’s broken arm.

They land in a heap. Malcolm’s head bounces off the sidewalk and things get hard to follow. There are knees and elbows and screamed curses from the (former) knife holder, and the bat crashing against him twice more, across his ribs. He can’t fight back, not well with the idiot half on his legs. He almost goes defensive, almost curls up and covers his head, hopes for the best. _ Almost. _

Then he reminds himself: They are not getting his watch.

Malcolm twists, manages to roll the former knife holder off him, and kicks out, mostly blindly, to where he thinks the bat holder is swinging at him from. He is rewarded with the feeling of the other man’s knee giving out under his foot. The man stumbles sideways and into the hood of a parked car. The alarm begins to blare.

That, in the end, is enough to make them decide that they need to leave. They stumble off in a shambling, limping run, knife holding bat up as they go. Malcolm watches them go from where he sits, blinking blood out of his eyes. It’s almost comical. They’ve only gone a block when the car’s alarm chirps off. The owner must not have come out, which is too bad. Malcolm could use help, he thinks. Things are swimming in a seriously disconcerting kind of way.

He lays back on the sidewalk, breathing heavy. He touches his side, and has to see the blood on his hand to understand that’s why his right side is so warm and wet. He stares at the (blue-black in the night) blood for a long moment before his useless brain tells him that this is ‘not good.’ 

When he tries to roll to his knees to get up, the pain that shoots through his torso at the twisting cuts the movement off before he can so much as get his right arm under himself. Everything keeps moving, though, in that undulating quicksand way of his night terrors and he has just enough strength and self preservation to force himself onto his right side so he doesn’t choke on his own vomit when it comes.

And then the pain of the muscles over his ribs contracting makes everything go dark.


	2. Chapter 2

His phone ringing at 3:47am is never going to be a good thing. But there’s several reasons he sleeps with his phone next to his head, and, when Gil squints against the screen’s brightness in the darkness, he sees one of them (the main one, even more than his job, which says _a_ _lot_) is calling him.

“Malcolm?” he asks into the phone, because at 3:47 in the morning, it seems unkind to use surnames, even chosen ones. This isn’t Profiler Malcolm calling him, but The Kid.

He’s answered with heavy breathing for a long moment, then a confused sounding, “Gil?”

Gil sits up, turns on his light, and says into the phone, “Talk to me, kid, what’s going on?” Because sometimes, sometimes Maclolm still needs encouragement to talk when he’s shaken, and he sounds as badly shaken as Gil’s ever heard him on the phone. And The Kid’s been calling him in the middle of the night for twenty years.  _ Shit _ .

More heavy breathing for a minute, then a sad, pained-sounding sigh that stutters in a concerning way. “They — I think —“ a groan, which is not helping Gil’s heart rate any as he stands and starts scrambling around for a pair of jeans to pull on, then, “They wanted my watch, Gil.”

“Okay,” Gil says, calm, because again, he’s had twenty years of dealing with this, and he knows calm works better than anything else, but inside his heart is twisting because he knows what watch Malcolm is talking about - it’s the only one he wears. He sits down on his bed, jeans undone but more important things to do than that, and stuffs his feet into a pair of sneakers that have seen better days. “Are you hurt?” It’s a dumb question, he can hear it in the way The Kid’s breathing, in the groan he probably didn’t even mean to let out. Standing, he puts his phone on speaker phone so he can thumb over to Find My Friends.

After a few too many ‘sleepwalking incidents’ (really disassociation events, if Gil’s research is correct, and considering Malacolm’s propensity to downplay his mental health, Gil knows he’s right) Gil made Malcolm promise to never turn his location off and Gil swore to never use it for anything but this: Finding Malcolm Bright when he’s too screwed up to find himself.

Gil gets a location just as Malcolm says, “My head really hurts. I think I blacked out?”

He’s grabbing his keys from the dish on the table that Jackie insisted they needed in the hallway and heading out the door as he asks, “Anything else?” It’s good to get an idea of what he’s dealing with. A head injury would explain the confusion in Malcolm’s voice.

“I…” Malcolm trails off and Gil runs to his car, feeling way less calm than he’s trying to sound on the phone, at the uncertainty in Malcolm’s voice. 

His Bluetooth auto connects when he starts the car. Small favors. “Talk to me, Kid,” he says, worried about Malcolm losing consciousness again. He’s got a drive ahead of him. On empty streets, he should get there in twenty minutes. If he wasn’t half sure that Malcolm would fight an EMT in this weird semi-lucid state, or that if he’s not keeping Malcolm talking, the younger man will slip back into unconsciousness, he’d hang up and call an ambulance to the area. Instead, he slaps the dome light on his car’s roof at the first stoplight and roars through, lights and siren on.

“Malcolm,” he says, when he’s met with nothing but that heavy, stuttered breathing. No response. “Malcolm,” he repeats, making his voice intentionally sharper, more commanding. It’s not something Gil uses very often against Malcolm, this authoritative tone, but desperate times, desperate measures and all that. Head injuries are serious. It’s more important to keep Malacolm awake than it is to tiptoe around Malcolm’s submissive tendencies (and Jesus, he knows way more about the kid’s sex life - or lack thereof, for the most part - than he’d like, but it does come in handy). Anything,  _ anything _ to keep the kid talking...

“Huh?” Malcolm asks, sounding truly confused. Gil frowns - definitely concussed. Malcolm proves it by asking, “Gil?”

“Yeah, kid, it’s me,” Gil answers, back to calm and reassuring now that Malcolm’s responding.

“Oh,” Malcolm mumbles, quiet and confused.  _ Weak. _ It’s making that same sad painful thing twist in Gil’s chest. Malcolm normally tries so damn hard not to sound vulnerable, and right now the pain and confusion is making him sound broken. “My head hurts,” Malcolm says after a moment of silence. Also terrifying. Malcolm rarely admits when he’s in pain - physical or mental - and never freely like that. 

“Yeah. I know, Malcolm. Keep talking to me, okay?”

“Why? I don’t wanna. I’m tired.”

That makes Gil chuckle, a relieved little laugh because that’s a vital part of Malcolm’s essence - he’s a curious and contrary little punk. Always wanting to know why. Always fighting the world when it comes to what’s good for him. “I know you are, Malcolm, but you’ve got a concussion, kid, so you need to stay awake.”

“I have a concussion,” Malcolm repeats back, still in that soft, confused sounding voice, like he’s repeating what Gil’s saying so he can believe it. Then, louder, more sure of himself, “That would explain why the sidewalk’s movin’.”

There’s a concerning slur in Malcolm’s voice. “Yeah. No earthquakes going on.” 

“‘Why’s your siren on?” Malcolm asks, sounds a little more aware. 

“It’s on because I’m doing seventy five, Kid.”

“Where you goin’? A mur-“

For some reason, Gil can’t hear him finish that question, so he cuts him off, “I’m coming for you.” Not good that Malcolm doesn’t realize why Gil’s in the car, doesn’t understand that Gil’s coming for him because Malcolm called  _ him _ for help instead of dialing 9-1-1. 

“Oh. That’s nice of you.” 

Gil sighs, makes a face as he debates how he shoulder respond to that, and decides to go with the full truth for once, vulnerability and emotions and all. “I’ll always come find you. Got it?” He says, voice firm again. This is not something he ever wants Malcolm to forget, head injury or not - and he suspects that’s why he got the call instead of the kid calling 9-1-1. He had promised a much younger Malcolm that once, the first time he had wandered and got lost in his thoughts and wound up at Coney Island of all places. He had been all of thirteen when he called Gil in a panic that his mother was going to kill him. Jessica was indeed livid, but understanding, and, though even then she wasn’t great at showing it, she was grateful to have Malcolm back home safe. And every time something like this happens, when Malcolm’s too out of it (usually with panic instead of a head injury), Malcolm does call him. So the message has been received. However, it’s always good to tell people things they need to hear, that you want them to hear. Gil has learned all too painfully that they may not be around forever to hear them.

“I know you will,” Malcolm answers back, no hesitation or confusion despite the head injury. It makes that awful sensation twisting away in his chest ease up just a bit.

“Good,” Gil tells him. “Now keep talking until I get there.” 

He presses the gas a bit harder when Malcolm asks again, “Why?”


	3. Chapter 3

Nearly twelve hours later, they have Malcolm settled in a private room, because Jessica and her family’s money have practically funded the hospital (jokes about giving Malcolm a permanent room are decidedly less funny when Gil thinks about the fact that a) it’s Malcolm and he really does seem to wind up in the hospital way too often, and b) Jessica could probably afford it). The woman in question is currently asleep on a closed little sofa in the corner of the room, frowning even in her sleep, Gil’s jacket draped over her.

The kid’s asleep too,  _ not _ sedated, nearly as pale as the bandage over his left eyebrow (‘Well, we’ll have to get a  _ better _ plastic surgeon to look at that,’ Jessica had commented, but there were worried tears in her eyes that had nothing to do with possible facial scars) and the cast on his left arm. Finding Malcolm with blood all over his face and shirt had sent Gil’s heart to hover somewhere around his lower intestine, but neither wound was particularly dangerous, the doctors assured Gil. The head injury of course, was the biggest concern, though he did manage to get two of his ribs broken too. 

The door to the room opened, and Dani and JT come in. Gil nods his head towards Jessica, doesn’t have to mime ‘be quiet’ because his detectives are smart and get the picture. That and they must sense a sleeping Jessica is much better than an awake Jessica. They both come close before talking, JT looking at Malcolm in the hospital bed like he’s going to pop up and yell surprise any minute. Or that might be the detective’s distaste for hospitals showing through. Either way, Gil doesn’t push.

Instead, he asks, “What’ve you got?”

“Bright was right —” Dani starts.

“No. Do not say that if he can possibly hear you,” JT admonishes, but Dani just rolls her eyes and keeps going.

“He did break someone’s arm. A man with blood on his shirt and a broken arm showed up at King’s County E.R. He was with another man who had a dislocated knee. There were a couple of uniforms there, transporting waiting on a drunk ‘n disorderly who cracked his head open. Dumb and Dumber tried to run.”

“Tried being the key word,” JT again interrupts, but this time, Dani gives a small smile. It’s a bit sadistic, that smile. Gil’s not worried - Malcolm is one of theirs now. Cops are protective over their own. Dani is  _ fiercely _ protective of her own.

“Exactly. Hard to run on a dislocated knee.”

JT nods. “That it is.” He takes over the story, saying, “They confessed to beating someone up over a watch. But tried to say since they were more injured, they shouldn’t be arrested. Claimed the guy was, and I quote, ‘a secret ninja or some shit.’” JT is doing his typical detached routine, but Gil can see through that as easily as he can tell Dani is secretly proud Malcolm kicked some ass. He can see it in the way JT’s eyes keep flicking over to Malcolm in the bed, the fact that JT is speaking much quieter than normal so he doesn’t wake him. Hell, he knew his team cared when they both showed up at six in the morning with coffee and demands for more information as to what happened. And then they had left, promising to find who dared try and mug Malcolm Bright.

“Both of them needed some minor surgeries,” Dani continues on, and yup, that is pride in her smile now. “But they’ve been booked.”

“Must be some watch,” JT comments. “How much do you think it’s worth, Dani?”

Gil knows why Malcolm took on two idiots with weapons rather than hand over a timepiece and how it has nothing to do with monetary value. He opens his mouth to tell them to drop that line of thinking, but there’s a grunt from the bed that pulls all their attention. The frown on Malcolm’s face would be comical in it’s mirroring of Jessica’s if Gil wasn’t concerned about Malcolm thrashing around in a night terror and hurting himself more than he already is. 

So he stands and puts a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder, just pressure initially. Waking up Malcolm Bright is a contact sport, and Gil’s earned his fair share of bruises over the years. The horror on the kid’s face is always worse than any minor injury, so Gil’s learned how to do it without getting a fist to the face. Most of the time.

“Malcolm,” he says, when Malcolm’s free right hand begins to twitch and lift off the bed. Gil doesn’t want him yanking out the I.V. needle on accident (or on purpose; if he’s being honest with himself, there’s a bigger chance of that happening), so he shakes him gently, acutely aware of the younger man’s injuries, of Dani and JT’s eyes on him. He glances up when Malcolm doesn’t wake up right away. Dani looks ready to bolt and get a nurse. Gil had promised Malcolm he’d try and stop them from sedating him. Part of keeping that promise is making sure Malcolm gives the hospital staff no reason to think he needs it, and waking up screaming or flailing around in front of a nurse will definitely make them think that he needs it. He holds up his free hand in a ‘not yet’ gesture and keeps up the gentle shaking.

A moment later, he’s rewarded with Malcolm opening his eyes. Which he promptly squints shut again, groaning. Gil remembers the overhead light and snaps it off. When he looks back down, Malcolm has his eyes open again and is trying to sit up. Because of course he is.

“No,” Gil says, firm but not unkind, and puts just the tiniest bit of pressure against the kid’s shoulder. It’s enough to keep him down. Gil would be concerned by that, if he hadn’t already gone through this waking Malcolm up routine twice. 

Malcolm frowns at him, then, like the last two times, his eyes get wide, panicked, as he wakes up more. “My watch, Gil, they wanted — I didn’t want to -”

“I’ve got it, kid,” he says, already having dug it out of his pocket in anticipation of this. He holds it up for Malcolm to see. 

Malcolm snatches it from him, relief making him settle down into the bed once again. He holds it up to his face to read the inscription on the back, if his headache will let him read it - not that he needs to read it to know what it says, the kid’s had it for over a decade now. Just like he did the last time. The doctors assured Gil this was normal, after the second time they went through the same routine had Gil rushing to find one as soon as Malcolm settled down. Short term memory loss was to be expected. They said it was a good thing Malcolm was remembering the altercation at all, and that had been reassuring. 

“Bro,” JT starts, and Gil sighs, he can hear the disbelief in JT’s voice, the ‘I have to call him out’ tone that Gil knows has gotten JT into trouble on the force. “You’re waking up in a hospital bed and you’re worried about a watch? Those guys had weapons. Weapons that kill people all the time!” And that, that right there is why Gil never gets too frustrated with JT, never lets his bluntness curtail their working relationship or friendship - under his frustration and cool demeanor, JT really is concerned. 

Malcolm may be laid up in a hospital bed, may be concussed, sporting broken bones and way more stitches than Gil cares to think about, but he’s a gifted psychologist. He sees right through JT’s outrage. At least, that’s what Gil assumes from the smile on the kid’s face. A real ‘oh, you do care about me’ kind of smile. Then his smile turns sad, and Gil knows what he’s going to say before he does. “It was a gift.” 

“So? Your Mom is rich as shit. She can buy you a new —” and that’s as far as he gets before Dani smacks him on the arm.

“Who gave you the watch?” she asks. 

His team is smart, Gil thinks proudly, as he settles back into his seat next to Malcolm’s bed. They’re good cops and they know the right questions to ask. Malcolm looks over at him, a silent question on his face. Gil nods. 

Malcolm holds out the watch to JT, who takes it and turns it over. Gil, like Malcolm, knows what it says by heart. Engraved in the metal is simply:

** _Love,_ **

** _G & J_ **

But, because Jackie never did anything by halves in her entire life (and  _ goddamnit, _ Gil loved her for that), along the solid part of the band, burned into the underside of the leather is: ‘ _ Time to make your future bright. _ ’ Gil knows for a fact, without ever having asked, that is why Malcolm chose the surname Bright before joining Quantico. 

JT wordlessly hands the watch over to Dani for her to read it. They both stand there for a long moment, then Dani hands it back to Malcolm. He takes it, his smile is still sad, pained in a way only talking about Jackie makes him look, and that’s okay because Gil is sure he has the same smile on his face too. 

“It was a college graduation present,” Malcolm says in answer to the unasked question.

JT and Dani look at him, and Gil nods even though he doesn’t need to. It wouldn’t take a detective to put it all together, who the G & J are. The silence is long and awkward for a moment, Malcolm’s eyes are already starting to droop back down - that’s the pain meds, making him so sleepy, the doctors had assured Gil - when JT, never one to let an uncomfortable moment sit, breaks the silence.

“Alright,” he says, accepting Malcolm’s reasoning for not handing over the watch. “You’re gonna need some mace or something if you’re going to keep walking around in the middle of the night looking like mugger bait.”

Malcolm’s eyes are closed, but the corners of his mouth twitch up in amusement. “‘kay,” he agrees.

“Oh, so pain meds are what makes him agreeable,” JT mutters, which nobody responds to.

Dani moves forward and takes the watch out of Malcolm’s hand. His eyes spring open instantly. “Just giving it back to Gil for safe keeping,” she promises quietly. Gil’s not dumb enough to think she says it softly, not even to himself. Dani would read that on his face. 

“Thanks,” the kid murmurs, nearly out before he finishes the word.

She holds it out to Gil, and he gladly takes the responsibility back. 


End file.
